India 2020: A Vision For The New Millennium By A. P. J. Abdul Kalam ,Y.S. Rajan

Can India become a First World nation within the next twenty years? Definitely, say the authors, in this seminal thought-provoking book.
India is a paradox in many ways. It is rich in natural resources, possesses a thriving industry and has a large pool of technical manpower, but the large mass of its people are illiterate and poverty-stricken, and in terms of human development indices it is among the worst-off nations.

We started well enough after independence but the lack of progress on many fronts thereafter is a major cause for concern. An old fatalism has begun to reassert itself and we have begun to lose our confidence. In India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, our most distinguished scientist, and Y.S. Rajan, who has been closely associated with the space programme, examine our strengths—and weaknesses—to offer a vision of how India can be among the world’s first five economic powers in the next twenty years.

The goal, as they assert, is not an unrealistic one. Extrapolating from current growth rates and trends, and suggesting various improvements and directions we can take to boost development, they show that we can soon be well on the way to providing our citizens with a decent standard of living. Past successes, too, bear them out. For example, we were able to produce enough food for our population through the green revolution, although many international experts scoffed at the notion that India could ever be without a begging bowl. In the sophisticated field of space technology we started from scratch to have today a system of satellite-based communication linking remote regions of the country. Initially there were failures in the space programme, but this only motivated our scientists to try harder. The same sense of purpose can lead us to success in many other areas. The aim: an India free from poverty, strong in trade and commerce, science and technology, providing health and education to all.

After a talk on the role technology could play in shaping a modern India, a ten-year-old girl came up to Dr Kalam for his autograph. ‘What is your ambition?’ Dr Kalam asked her. The response was prompt. ‘I would like to live in a developed India.’ That aspiration, simply expressed, has been the hope of millions of Indians since independence. At the edge of the new millennium, Dr Kalam and Y.S. Rajan show us how to accomplish that goal.


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Math and the Mona Lisa by Bulent Atalay

The Nature of Genius

Leonardo da Vinci was one of history's true geniuses, equally brilliant as an artist, scientist, and mathematician. Readers of The Da Vinci Code were given a glimpse of the mysterious connections between math, science, and Leonardo's art. Math and the Mona Lisa picks up where The Da Vinci Code left off, illuminating Leonardo's life and work to uncover connections that, until now, have been known only to scholars.

Following Leonardo's own unique model, Atalay searches for the internal dynamics of art and science, revealing to us the deep unity of the two cultures. He provides a broad overview of the development of science from the dawn of civilization to today's quantum mechanics. From this base of information, Atalay offers a fascinating view into Leonardo's restless intellect and modus operandi, allowing us to see the source of his ideas and to appreciate his art from a new perspective. William D. Phillips, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997, writes of the author, "Atalay is indeed a modern renaissance man, and he invites us to tap the power of synthesis that is Leonardo's model."

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The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”

For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.

Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan.


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